Oaths & Other Obsolete Things
by mew-tsubaki
Summary: Oneshot, slash. When Tony asks a question, he demands an answer. Unfortunately, he demands an answer from all of his fellow Avengers. *established!TonySteve* .::GGE '13 entry 4—for Sylvia::.


**Oaths & Other Obsolete Things**

An Avengers oneshot

by mew-tsubaki

Note: The _Avengers_ characters belong to Stan Lee and Marvel, not to me. Oh, boy—my 1st Avengers fic that's not a crossover…let's see how this goes. O.o Read, review, and enjoy! *Written for **glowing neon** for the Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2013 forum with the prompts _calendar, oath,_ & _screen_, with the pairing Tony/Steve.

- ^-^3

Tony Stark was awake. Wide awake. He'd been wide awake since, say, three a.m. and hadn't felt drowsy in the least bit since his body had said, quite suddenly, "All right, bozo, no rest for the wicked."

Which was quite absurd. Tony, wicked? Hadn't he saved the planet from nuclear destruction not all that long ago?

Of course, as his conscience was chiding him, the "wicked" did not necessarily allude to the lovely ol' battle of Good versus Evil. There were other wicked things out there, too. Like…New Englanders. Didn't they use "wicked" too much to describe "cool" things?

All right, maybe Tony was getting ahead of himself, because _this_ wasn't exactly cool… _This_ was amazing and brilliant and made Tony feel as though the world had burst into colors of which he hadn't taken notice before and—and—

_This_ was currently sleeping on his side, hogging all the blankets in Tony's bed.

Tony sat up in bed and ran a hand through his dark hair. Christ. If someone had told him last year that he'd be sharing a bed not with Pepper Potts but with Steve Rogers, he would've laughed in the person's face…and then punched their lights out. Besides, there were so many good things about Pepper, and too many things that annoyed him about Steve. When Pepper had to have her way, she was all…_sexy_ about it. When Steve had to have his way, he'd just stolidly stare Tony in the face. Well, actually, when Steve did that, this kind of puppy-like pout played with his lips and made Tony go a little weak-kneed, and it kind of made Tony wonder if Steve did that innocently or actually on purpose, because then Steve really could play on Pepper's level and—

"_UGH_," Tony groaned, and he threw his legs over the side of the bed. His head ached, the more he thought about things. It didn't help that, when he reached for his watch on the nightstand, he saw a picture of him and Pepper. Tony frowned, but he didn't lay it face-down. Instead, he opened the bottom drawer of the nightstand and crammed it inside. He really needed to clean up his place.

Steve murmured and then rolled onto his back. After a quiet yawn, he lifted his head up a little in time to see Tony dress. "Good morning."

"Ah, that. Right. Yeah."

Tony didn't need to turn around to hear the frown in Steve's voice. "Is something wrong, Tony?"

Was it bad to kind of miss the days when they bickered and spat "Stark" and "Rogers" at each other? Then again, Tony really liked the way Steve said "Tony," as if Tony were someone who deserved the soft way Steve spoke to him. Still, the calendar popped up on the screen inside the door to his closet. Tony had been enjoying this soft-spoken man for nearly a month after the short split the entire team had endured.

"Tony." Steve got up and pulled his briefs on before wrapping the sheet around himself. Despite being a soldier, there were so many womanly things Steve did. "Hey. Something's wrong. Tell me what's on your mind. I can't know unless you tell me."

Tony clenched his jaw. Well, if Steve insisted that the Band-Aid be ripped off quickly—"I should tell Pepper."

"Oh." It wasn't a "What do you mean?" oh. Steve didn't have to catch up with this decade to understand the ways of the world.

"I mean—" The philanthropist spun on his heel and grimaced. "Do you think I should?"

ARGH, _no_, Steve was giving him that slight pout again! He really didn't need that right now, not coupled with those baby blues, either, just…ARGH. Loving Steve Rogers was mentally and emotionally exhausting. "It doesn't matter what I think. That's between you and Pepper."

Tony scowled and slipped a shirt on. "I really don't need your diplomacy right now, Mr. Ambassador."

"That's not what I mean, Tony, and you know it. Hey!" Steve caught his arm as he started to walk away. "I'm trying to be the good guy. I don't want to stress you out more than you already seem to be about this." He pecked Tony's forehead lightly. "When was the last time you spoke with her?"

"Dunno… Before we fought in Manhattan, I think." As he rested his head on Steve's shoulder, his mind whirred and his eyes lit up. "Wait a minute. That's it."

"What's it?" Steve asked as Tony jogged out of the room.

"I'll just call a meeting and ask for everyone's opinion. After all, five heads are better than two!"

Tony went downstairs into his garage-turned-lab and had Jarvis bring up two separate screens, one to call Bruce and the other to call Clint. Clint answered first.

"'Morning, my fine-feathered friend," Tony said to him.

Clint gave him a grumpy look. "Really, Tony?"

"Yes, really, now if you'd be so kind as to wake up your bedfellow—"

"I wasn't asleep!" Natasha bitched as she shoved Clint half out of his chair so that she could sit on the edge of the seat.

Tony snorted. "And in disproving half of my statement, you proved the rest," he commented, and Natasha and Clint both turned bright red.

"Tony, stop teasing them," Steve, now dressed, said as he entered the room after his third try trying to work the fancy lock on the door. "And I can't believe you really meant you'd bother everyone just with this. Hello, Natasha, Clint," he said to the others with a wave.

"Bother _everyone_ with what?" Clint asked. "And don't tell me that he's going to—"

"Tony, I was happily asleep, so this had _better be good_," Bruce snarled as his face appeared on a screen beside the assassin duo's. Bruce really wasn't a morning person.

Steve stood a little closer to Tony. Tony was a little heartened; it was as if a part of Steve still thought Bruce might fall through the screen and attack Tony, so Steve had to protect him. "Trust me," Tony said, patting Steve on the arm to calm him, "this is important."

Natasha smiled sardonically. "Gee, you sure you don't want to wait for Thor to join us, too, to listen to your problems, Stark?"

"Ha ha. Honestly, I don't see the problem in calling on my friends to ask for some advice."

Really, what was _with_ people today? When Tony said that, Bruce and Natasha seemed a little dumbfounded, and Clint—oh, lordy, he didn't _blush_, did he?

"Hey, Steve, are you sure Tony doesn't have a fever?" Bruce asked. "He doesn't sound like himself…"

"No, he's fine," Steve assured them.

"If we're all done talking about me as if I'm not in the room, I'd like to pose my question now," Tony groused. He took a deep breath. "So. …how should I break this"—he gestured between him and Steve—"to Pepper?"

For almost two, three minutes, there was dead silence. And then the faces on the screens burst into laughter. It was a good thing that they weren't really trying to say anything, because Tony was certain that he wouldn't have been able to understand them anyway.

"If you're done—"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Natasha caught her breath first and pushed some hair out of her face. "_This_ is why you summoned us? To talk about your relationship issues?"

"I'm going back to bed," Bruce commented.

"Wait, don't!" Tony whined.

"But this isn't really up to us, Tony," the physicist said. "This is something for you to decide." Without another thought, Bruce ended the call on his end, and his screen went blank.

Tony looked pitifully at Natasha and Clint. "Are you guys going to tell me the same thing?"

"Eh" was all Clint said, and they both shrugged.

"How did you two handle telling Papa Fury over there that you two are an item?"

They both turned bright red once again. "Ah, we, uh, we're not—" But Clint's fluster was so childishly obvious.

"Goodbye, Tony, and have fun figuring out your own problems. Bye, Steve!" Natasha said, waving sweetly to _him_ before ending the call on their end. Good god, she could be so evil one second and so nice the next!

Steve turned Tony to face him. "Hey, we'll manage, somehow. She can't be all that angry at you, since she hasn't come back since the initiative."

Tony rubbed a hand over his face. "Urgh, Steve… That's exactly the kind of thing Pepper would do when she's angry with me. She walks away to sort out her thoughts." He sighed and sat down in the chair at his desk. "I still love her, you know."

The soldier tensed.

"Not in that way, Steve. But I've known her for a very long time, and I owe it to her at least to end things cleanly. I made a promise to her once, to be better at being a decent human being."

Steve eased into a gentle smile—the same one Tony had fallen for after the battle, right before the team had split briefly. It was the same smile that Tony had been unable to forget, partially because it was such a rare sight from the stoic Steve Rogers, and partially because it was the first time Tony had ever considered a man to be good-looking in that way. But it wasn't about liking men or women. It was about feeling an odd thrum in his bones that didn't come from the device in his chest and that Pepper never had given him.

"Or I could be devious and say nothing to her since she's said nothing to me."

Steve quirked one golden eyebrow and leaned forward until his lips were near Tony's. "Be nice, Tony, and just be devious in other ways, all right? For me."

Of course, how could he say no?

- ^-^3

**B3 Me gusta. XD I actually really enjoyed writing this! It was fun! I had to give some thought about these two, because either could top, ngl, but I like Tony being in charge for the most part… Steve really is a woman… XD ;P And, ah, Pepper—I fear there was a hint of unintended Pepper-bashing in here, sorry. At least there were some adorable team moments, non?**

**I hope I did them justice, Sylvia! :] This was quite new to me, writing Avengers slash, but I think I could do this more in the future, so thanks for requesting it!**

**Thanks for reading, everyone, and please review!**

**-mew-tsubaki :D**


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